


The Path of a Moving Object

by hollycomb



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 15:05:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pavel moves to San Francisco at sixteen after a family tragedy. He takes a job at a coffee shop and meets Academy student Hikaru Sulu, who comes in for hot tea every morning. They're both cautious enough to miss every opportunity that the other offers, until the night before Hikaru leaves for space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Path of a Moving Object

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [运行轨道](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10687677) by [Wenny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wenny/pseuds/Wenny)



> I wrote this in 2010 - udating AO3 with some older stuff today, from Trek and other fandoms.

  
  
Pavel wasn't sure why he chose San Francisco. It was something about the Golden Gate Bridge, pictures he'd seen of it as a boy. After his sister died - after the funeral and the shiva and his best attempts to help with eating all the food that was brought - he couldn't be in Russia anymore, or around anything remotely familiar. He couldn't even say goodbye to his parents, because they would rightfully accuse him of being selfish and their grief would convince him to stay. Like a coward, he left a note and walked to the transport station alone, in the middle of the night.   
  
The snow was melting, still hard under his boots in places, dirty and dull in the moonlight. He was sixteen years old, and his twin sister was dead. He didn't know how to live without Polina sketching abstract drawings over his star charts and telling him which kind of shampoo was best for curls, so he left his family, his school, his life in the dust and started another one in a city full of fog.   
  
-  
  
The job at the coffee shop was easy to get. He told his manager that he had no plans to leave for school, which was true at the time. He could work full time, come in before sunrise and stay until the last customer finished his espresso. Pavel knew how to work hard, and he was happy to be given such routine tasks, to stop analyzing and wondering, hating the universe for being inexplicable enough to let a girl like Polina slip through the cracks, gone forever. He didn't like being alone in the drippy apartment he'd rented, so he spent as much time as he could at work.   
  
There were regular customers, and Pavel used his encyclopedic memory to impress them by memorizing their usual orders. They often smiled at him when he was able to deliver the drink they were planning on asking for by the time they came to the counter, and it was always a struggle to smile back, any expression of happiness only faked for the sake of being polite, except when it came to Hikaru.   
  
“Jesus,” Hikaru said, grinning as he accepted his small white tea with orange blossom honey and two mint leaves. “Nobody ever remembers my order.” He smiled more widely, and Pavel felt himself blush. Hikaru was handsome. Pavel was still mostly comatose with grief, but he hadn't failed to notice the way Hikaru's ass looked in his Starfleet cadet uniform. He made sure to have fresh mint for Hikaru every morning; he'd even thought of growing some himself when his manager complained about the cost.   
  
Pavel and Hikaru exchanged nothing more than pleasantries for several months, but when Pavel saw his favorite book tucked under Hikaru's arm one morning as Hikaru fumbled his wallet from his pocket, he couldn't help commenting.   
  
“ _The Inverse Hourglass_ ,” Pavel said, nodding to the book. It was a kind of physics textbook, but it read like a poem about the secret grace of the universe. Polina had given Pavel a copy for his thirteenth birthday, claiming that it would convince him to believe, like she did, in God. It hadn't managed that trick, but after reading it, Pavel was convinced that the author hadn't meant it to do anything so irrational. He'd fought with Polina about this. They both wrote letters to the author, but never heard back.   
  
“That's a good book,” Pavel said. He still hated the way Standard sounded on his tongue, though he had been fluent since he was a child.   
  
“I'm reading it for class,” Hikaru said. “Astrophysics – I go to the Academy.”  
  
“Starfleet,” Pavel said, nodding. Many of his customers were students. It was the kind of institution he had been considering attending himself, before Polina's accident. “Are you almost finished?”  
  
“Yeah,” Hikaru said. “This is my last year. I'm training, mostly. Flying. I'm a pilot.”   
  
They stared at each other as if the conversation might continue, but Pavel had customers and Hikaru had his tea to drink. Pavel felt something when Hikaru lingered, and he knew it was good, but it had been so long that he couldn't identify which sort of good feeling it was.   
  
“Well,” Pavel said. “Enjoy the book.” He felt like an idiot when he heard himself say this, and realized that it was the first time since his job interview that he'd cared about what anyone thought of him. Hikaru nodded and smiled, turning to go. Pavel watched him until his next customer cleared her throat.  
  
That night, alone in his apartment, still reeking of coffee beans as he stared up at the slats of his dusty blinds, Pavel thought of how proud Hikaru had sounded when he said _I'm a pilot_. He smiled at the moon through the window. Polina would have been happy with him for at last identifying a reason why the world was still worthwhile: boys with dark brown eyes who flew through space.   
  
-  
  
Pavel bought a jar of orange blossom honey from the shop so he could eat it languorously at home. He didn't drink tea, so he ate it with a spoon, taking tiny portions into his mouth while he sat at his breakfast table, watching the sky change colors with the sunrise. Later, at the shop, when he made Hikaru's tea, he fought the urge to lick the spoon clean before stirring the honey in.   
  
“I finished _The Inverse Hourglass_ ,” Hikaru said one morning as Pavel carefully pressed a lid over his tea. “You think you'd, uh. Be willing to explain it to me sometime?”  
  
Pavel laughed, then realized that Hikaru was serious, watching him expectantly. He shrugged, feeling panicked. He'd gotten so used to playing dumb, keeping silent and going about his days with as little intellectual energy as possible, that he was afraid he wouldn't be able to explain anything.  
  
“I mean, I get what it's trying to say, I do,” Hikaru said hurriedly. “And I get the concepts. It's just – some of the more abstract stuff? I don't know, I wanted to talk about it with someone, so – I don't know. Sorry.”  
  
Pavel had no idea why Hikaru was apologizing until he realized that he still hadn't responded. He nearly knocked Hikaru's tea over as he passed it across the counter.   
  
“We could talk,” Pavel said, the words sounding harsh and uncomfortable. The shop was busy, customers peering over Hikaru's shoulders impatiently. “If – where – when –”  
  
“When does your shift end?” Hikaru asked.   
  
“Six o'clock,” Pavel said. His heart had begun to pound. Hikaru grinned.  
  
“Cool, so, if I come by –”  
  
“Yes.” Again, Pavel sounded too severe when he spoke, maybe because he was out of practice, not just with Standard but in general. “I will be here.”   
  
“Ah – okay. Good. See you later, then. We'll talk about the book.” Hikaru laughed at himself, then backed away. Pavel watched as he sipped his tea too soon, and saw the moment when he burned his tongue.  
  
That day, Pavel made several mistakes at work, scalding his hand with hot milk and spilling an embarrassing amount of sugar on the back counter. He was distracted, and jittery, despite the fact that he never partook of the caffeinated products that he peddled. By six o'clock, his stomach was aching, and he almost wished Hikaru would forget their appointment to meet. It would crush him, but that disappointment would be easier to bear than the nauseating fear of being disappointing himself.   
  
Hikaru arrived not in his usual cadet uniform but in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt that said _Milioti Fencing_ across the chest. The words were mysterious to Pavel, who'd never had reason to learn the Standard word for such an antiquated, unusual sport. He thought perhaps that Hikaru had worked for a company that erected fences over the summer, and the idea was incredibly endearing, images of Hikaru doing hard labor in the hot sun sneaking into his mind. He would have been smaller than most of the other men on the job, as he was probably smaller than many of the men in his flight program. Pavel liked his manageable size. He was strong, but sleek enough to be quick – Pavel could see it even in the way he wielded a tea cup – and only a few inches taller than Pavel.   
  
“Okay, so this book,” Hikaru said when they had settled together at an outdoor table at a tavern across the street from the coffee shop. Hikaru took _The Inverse Hourglass_ out of his shoulder bag and opened it on the table as if they would take turns reading passages to each other. “I like it, but it's not really – my style?”  
  
“It's not as dry as you expected?” Pavel said, hoping that he didn't sound snobby. He was often accused of that when he was speaking Russian; Polina had been one of his most frequent accusers, though she usually pointed this out kindly, to keep him from offending potential friends. Pavel wanted to remark on the unusual practice of reading from an actual paper-and-binding book rather than loading text onto a PADD, but he was afraid that would sound snobby, or critical, or just boring. His foot was bouncing under the table as he watched Hikaru order a beer from the waiter. Pavel asked for one, too, and the waiter smiled a little, but didn't ID scan him.   
  
“How old are you?” Hikaru asked when the waiter was gone. Hikaru was playing with the pages of the book, flipping them through his fingers while he studied Pavel from across the small table. Pavel wanted to lie about his age, and he did, but only by five months.  
  
“Seventeen,” he said.   
  
“And you're Russian?” Hikaru said, still flipping pages.   
  
“Yes. I moved here back in November.”  
  
“Yeah? You going to school here or something?”  
  
“Maybe – eventually.” Pavel looked down at the book, his hands fidgeting between his knees, under the table. “So – what did you find confusing?”  
  
He was sure that he sounded like a snob then, but if Hikaru noticed, he didn't let on. He took Pavel's cue and started talking about the book, his rambling observations segueing into complaints about his professors and anecdotes about his classmates that made Pavel laugh into his beer. A few hours later, he hadn't answered many questions about _The Inverse Hourglass_ , but he'd told Hikaru about his friend Vanya, who had refused to wear shoes for two years because he was convinced that the Earth was speaking to him through tectonic vibrations, and a Standard teacher he'd had in grade school who got in trouble with the students' parents for defining the word _motherfucker_ when someone asked about it.   
  
“It's still my favorite Standard word,” Pavel said, proud of himself for making Hikaru laugh. They were both grinning at each other, working on their third beers, the sun long gone and the temperature dropping rapidly.   
  
“My favorite is 'scrimmage,'” Hikaru said, and Pavel laughed hard, though he had no idea what that meant. He watched Hikaru rummage around in his bag, afraid that he was getting ready to leave, packing up his things, but instead he pulled something out of it: a long, ratty scarf with the word CHARGERS knitted into it.  
  
“I've never heard of 'scrimmage,'” Pavel said, catching the scarf when Hikaru tossed it to him. “What does it mean?”  
  
“It's an American football term,” Hikaru said. “You can wear that if you want,” he said, nodding to the scarf. “You look like you're cold.”   
  
“I'm not,” Pavel said, though he was shivering. There was something in the damp air here that got into his bones more deeply than the bitterest Russian winter ever had. He held the scarf out with both hands, reading it again. “Chargers?” he said. “Is that a team?”  
  
“Yeah. The San Diego team. I decided they were my favorites when I was a kid, just to be an asshole, I guess, since they're rivals of the 49ers – that's the San Francisco team. I hated that name when I was five. Like, it really bothered me, on a personal level. The 49ers? What does that even mean, right?”  
  
“Right,” Pavel said. He looped the scarf around his neck, still grinning at Hikaru, unable to stop. “Thanks,” he said, wrapping his hands up in the ends of the scarf.   
  
The waiter came and asked if they'd like another round, and before Pavel could ask for one, Hikaru shook his head and dug out his wallet.   
  
“I'd better stop,” he said. “I'm getting kind of lit – I've got a botany exam tomorrow morning.”   
  
“Botany?” Pavel said, and Hikaru laughed at the surprise in his voice, which was edged with distaste. It just seemed such a quaint subject to force a Starfleet pilot to take. Hikaru had greater, astrophysical concerns.  
  
“It's my elective,” Hikaru said. “I know it's weird, but it's like the Chargers. I blame my childhood. I have three older sisters, and they used to drive me crazy, so I'd run away from home for the day, ride my bike to one of the parks and just disappear into the woods to play scientist. I'd collect all these specimens, spend the whole day hunting for weird leaves and flowers, and I guess I have this fantasy that I'll be able to do it in space someday, on other planets.” He smirked. “You know,” he said. “In my spare time.”  
  
“Sure,” Pavel said. He didn't want Hikaru to leave. Just the idea of him once having been a little boy and wandering alone through a city park made Pavel anxious. He was haunted by separation and would never stop dreading the feeling that came with it.   
  
They paid for their drinks and walked down toward the Academy. Pavel could see it in the distance, flight towers in the training fields blinking through the fog. He unwound the scarf and tried to give it back, but Hikaru shook his head.   
  
“Keep it,” he said. “I can get it tomorrow when I come in for my tea.”   
  
“It must be so expensive,” Pavel said, realizing even as he spoke that he was saying the wrong thing, but it was too late now. “Buying tea every morning.” He'd often wondered why Hikaru didn't just replicate some in his dorm room, though it broke his heart to think that someday a morning at work would pass without Hikaru searching for him as he came through the door and smiling when their eyes met.   
  
“I'm weird,” Hikaru said, laughing. He was shuffling in place, kicking at the curb where they'd stopped to part and head in different directions. “I lug around paper books and I like tea from a particular shop. My sisters always gave me hell for this kind of stuff. They say I'm fussy.”   
  
“Fussy,” Pavel repeated; another word he'd never heard in Standard. “Did you build fences?” he asked, pointing to Hikaru's shirt, and Hikaru stared at him in soft confusion for a moment before looking down at his shirt and bursting into laughter.  
  
“No, no,” he said, wiping at his eyes, still laughing. “Sorry, I just – I forgot I was wearing this. No, this is another dorky, anachronistic thing I do. Fencing – it's a sport. You know, with swords?” He moved his wrist about as if he were holding one.   
  
“You fight with swords?” Pavel said. He felt as if his feet would leave the sidewalk. The flowers, the physics textbook with the notes scribbled in pencil up and down the margins, this news about sword-fighting, the two mint leaves – it was if the instruments of each of these details were slowly reaching a crescendo in Pavel's head, music swelling into an epiphany. They were standing under a street lamp that seemed to make Hikaru glow like a prize at the end of a maze, the kind of thing that should be reached for with both hands, sprinted toward.   
  
“Yeah,” Hikaru said, scratching at the back of his neck. He seemed embarrassed, and Pavel wanted to tell him that he shouldn't be, but he was afraid he would gush idiotically if he tried.   
  
“That must be very – highly skilled – that is, you would have to be –” Pavel ended up stuttering idiotically instead, and Hikaru took a few steps backward, toward his dorm, back toward a world that seemed to exist inside a glass bubble that Pavel's sister's death had expelled him from forever.   
  
“Everybody gives me a hard time for it,” Hikaru said, still backing away. “But I figure it might come in handy someday. Another dumb fantasy, right? Anyway, thanks for meeting with me. I'll see you tomorrow, right? At the shop?”  
  
“At the shop,” Pavel repeated glumly. He'd thought, for half a second, that Hikaru would ask him to meet again the next day, after work, for more beers and conversation that involved leaning toward each other across a rickety cafe table.   
  
Back in his apartment, Pavel took a bath, but the water cooled quickly and did nothing to take the chill out of his bones. He dressed in boxers and a sweater and took Hikaru's scarf to bed, breathing the smell of him from it until he fell asleep. He dreamed that he was lost in the woods, looking for Hikaru and finding only lurid tropical flowers that seemed to threaten him with poison.  
  
-  
  
Hikaru continued to come to the shop every morning for his tea, and sometimes he lingered at the counter, telling Pavel about a flight exercise or a physics lecture, annoying the other customers, but he didn't ask to meet again. Pavel wondered if Hikaru was waiting for him to ask, but he couldn't imagine risking such a thing, so he just smiled and laughed at Hikaru's stories, and wished him a pleasant day when he backed away from the counter with his paper cup steaming in his hand.   
  
Winter seemed to last even longer than it had in Russia, everything damp and heavy with the omnipresent chill. Pavel kept forgetting to bring Hikaru's scarf to work, and finally stopped apologizing for doing so. The scarf lived in Pavel's bed, and he wound it around his hands at night, under the blankets, sometimes bringing the rough wool down between his legs when he touched himself. He felt so disgusted with himself when he did this, so pathetically alone, but he couldn't seem to stop, always shivered and moaned when he allowed himself to do it. He tried not to think of it when he saw Hikaru at the shop, because it made his cheeks pink and his voice shake when he did.   
  
Sometimes Hikaru came in with friends. He didn't introduce them to Pavel, but he didn't ignore Pavel, either, usually ignoring his friends while he was at the counter, going out of his way to have something to say to Pavel on those days. Pavel decided that Hikaru felt sorry for him, and tried to be less stupidly responsive, less prone to loose smiles and inane conversations that lingered awkwardly until they died off. Hikaru took the hint and backed off a bit, too. It hurt worse than Pavel expected. He knew that he needed to make real friends, to make some attempt at a real connection to the life he'd left Russia for, or he would only run back home to his parents, who sent him angry PADD messages every week.   
  
_Your sister would not have done this_ , his mother eventually accused. It was true.  
  
Pavel had secret conversations with Polina in his head, usually while he was wandering the city alone before and after work. He would walk down to the water and hear his sister in his head: _Why do you intentionally keep yourself away from the things that make you happy? Like when you quit running because Papa said it was a function of your vanity. He was wrong, Pasha, but you take everything so hard. You spoil things for yourself_.   
  
He knew he was only trying to console himself with these reminders of his sister's old advice, that he wasn't really hearing her. When she'd been alive, they'd been close to telepathic, and Pavel had done some research on the physiology of twins, trying to determine what in the makeup of their minds might elicit such an illusion of connectedness. Polina told him that he would never find an explanation that he could study under a microscope.   
  
Pavel bought a new pair of running shoes and some fancy socks and started training twice a day. He ate healthier food, thinking of it as fuel for his training, and began to feel less tired and gloomy. The weather improved, and he allowed himself to again smile foolishly at Hikaru when he came into the shop. Hikaru smiled back, and Pavel thought he saw relief in Hikaru's eyes. He had never missed a day at the shop, and Pavel had never failed to find two mint leaves for him each morning, even if he had to buy a sprig of mint at the street market on the way to work.  
  
“I suppose you graduate soon?” Pavel said in April, when the mood of the cadets who came into the shop had begun to swing back and forth between manic exuberance and grim discussion of final exams.   
  
“Yeah,” Hikaru said, letting out a deep breath when he said so. “I've got my big test next month, for my starship license.” He raised his eyebrows, making an uncertain face. “Kinda scary.”  
  
“You'll be great,” Pavel said, beaming with certainty as he handed Hikaru his tea. “And then – will they – you'll go to space?”  
  
“They'll assign me to a mission, yeah,” Hikaru said. He covered his tea cup with both hands. “I'll have to get skunky tea from the replicator. No mint leaves.”  
  
“You can at least stock up on this before you leave,” Pavel said, picking up a jar of the orange blossom honey that they sold. He was still smiling, pretending that his heart wasn't heavy at the thought of Hikaru disappearing into space. It wasn't as if they were really friends – Pavel didn't even know Hikaru's last name – but they were a part of each other's lives, in an odd way. In the way that Pavel slept with Hikaru's scarf and dreamed of being his boyfriend, a fellow Academy student, ready to blast into space at his side.   
  
In May, Hikaru seemed stressed, coming into the shop with bags under his eyes, but he still had a smile for Pavel every morning, even when it seemed a bit terrified and small. Pavel wanted to reach over the counter, grasp both of Hikaru's hands and kiss them reverently, whispering promises in Russian, telling him that he would be wonderful. He tried to imbue Hikaru's tea with these reassurances, laughing at himself as he did, thinking that Polina would be delighted by this whimsy.   
  
Pavel searched the network on his PADD for the Starfleet testing schedule and found it. He kept track of the date of the flight exam, beginning to get as anxious about its approach as Hikaru, and on the day before the exam it was harder than ever to restrain himself from reaching for Hikaru's hand and giving it a squeeze instead of just taking the money he handed over.  
  
“My test is tomorrow,” Hikaru blurted as Pavel pressed the lid over his tea. Pavel looked up, trying to seem surprised.   
  
“Get plenty of rest tonight, then,” he said seriously. “And eat something healthy for dinner. Pasta with vegetables, maybe. And some protein. Chicken would probably be safest.”  
  
Hikaru smiled, slowly at first, then so wide that Pavel thought his eyes would water. Pavel's burned a bit, from embarrassment, and he looked away.  
  
“I'll come here after the test,” Hikaru said. “I'll probably be done around six. If – if you're still getting off work at that time. It was – it was six, right?” he said, frowning in a theatrically quizzical way. Pavel knew then that he was only pretending not to remember the last time they'd left the coffee shop together. He smiled.  
  
“Yes, come,” he said, his heart like a fledgling bird, excited and imperiled by a sudden attempt at flight. “Six o'clock. I'll be here.”   
  
Hikaru wasn't at the shop at his usual time the next morning, and Pavel wasn't surprised; he was probably getting ready for his test, already too jittery for even the small amount of caffeine in his white tea. Pavel was almost relieved not to see him, afraid of what would happen later – would Hikaru only come in for a celebratory cup of tea and then leave again, off to spend the night drinking with his real friends? Would he hang around until Pavel got off shift, only to bring him to an end of the year party where he would be easily distracted by his fellow graduates? Pavel spent the whole afternoon lingering by the shop's front windows as often as he could, watching the sky, though he'd never been able to see any training aircraft from the shop.  
  
By six o'clock, Pavel was sweating under his clothes, lingering to wipe down the counters for a second time when Hikaru was fifteen minutes late. He clocked out, heartsick with the fear that Hikaru hadn't shown because he hadn't passed his test, but when he turned for the door as he pulled his apron over his head, Hikaru was suddenly catapulting through it, grinning and breathless, his cadet's jacket unbuttoned over his undershirt.   
  
Pavel felt like the sky had dropped down onto his shoulders as Hikaru hurried forward. _Don't throw your arms around him_ , he told himself as he laughed with relief. _It wouldn't be appropriate_.  
  
“I did it,” Hikaru said, panting the words out. “I'm a Starfleet pilot.”  
  
“Congratulations!” Pavel said, putting out his hand. Hikaru laughed and pulled Pavel forward into a hard, clumsy hug. Pavel felt his whole body flush as he clapped Hikaru on the back. Hikaru smelled faintly of sweat and something that might have been jet fuel, or ozone, and Pavel was light-headed, ready to be carried all the way home.   
  
“Thanks for all the tea,” Hikaru said, holding Pavel out by his shoulders. He said so as if the tea had been a gift, a magic potion that had kept him safe during a year long trial.   
  
“I'm – you're welcome.” Pavel's face was still burning from that hug, and the feeling of Hikaru's hands on his shoulders.   
  
“They're sending me up to a space station for assignment tomorrow morning,” Hikaru said, taking every seedling of hope in Pavel's heart and scattering them into the wind. “So I've got one night of freedom. I think I'm going to stick with tradition and get hammered. Want to join me?”  
  
“Yes,” Pavel said, and it was like he'd never said that word before in any language, because he'd never known how much he could mean it.   
  
They started out at a bar across the street, squeezed close to each other because the stools were packed with celebrating graduates, some of them stopping to lean on Hikaru's back and compliment him on the maneuvers he'd demonstrated during his test. Hikaru thanked all of them, blushing with pride before turning back to Pavel to say, _anyway_ and continue describing every minute of the test. The music playing in the bar seemed perfect for the occasion, and the volume was so loud that Pavel had to lean close, Hikaru's lips almost touching his ear as he ran through a thousand technical flight terms that Pavel was unfamiliar with but fascinated by.   
  
Three strong drinks into the night, they were both a little drunk by the time they left the bar and wound through the streets looking for a quieter place to eat something, their ears still buzzing. Hikaru had stopped talking about the test and moved on to his sisters, a subject that made Pavel nervous.   
  
“Do you have any siblings?” Hikaru asked once they were seated across from each other at a low-lit seafood restaurant that seemed expensive, judging by the thread count on the cloth napkins. Pavel let his mouth hang open for a moment before he decided how to answer.  
  
“I had a sister,” he said. “She died last year.”  
  
“Oh – God, I'm so sorry.” Hikaru looked so broken by this that Pavel was sorry he'd said it. He shook his head, not wanting to go on, but Hikaru was leaning forward, clearly curious. “Older or younger?” he asked, keeping his voice soft. His hand was twitching on the table, and Pavel stared at it, wondering if he was wanting to reach over, to cover Pavel's hand with his own.  
  
“She was my twin,” Pavel said. It had been so long since he'd talked about Polina that she felt like a story he'd invented. “She's the reason I came here. There was an accident – a boy driving her home from a date took a corner too sharply on his hover bike. They both – she loved him, so – I'm glad she wasn't alone.” He made himself stop talking then, and stopped fidgeting nervously with his silverware. Hikaru pushed his hand across the table, and left it there, just an inch away from Pavel's.   
  
“Sorry,” Pavel said, shaking his head like a wet dog. “I talk too much when I drink.”  
  
“I want to hear you talk,” Hikaru said, and Pavel looked up at him, the combination of sympathy and intensity in Hikaru's gaze sinking down into his chest like transfered heat. “I – you – I don't know.” Hikaru laughed at himself and pulled his hand back. “I've just always had this curiosity about you, I guess. I kept telling myself all week, you know – this was my last chance.”   
  
“Last chance?” Pavel said hopefully.   
  
“To get to know you,” Hikaru said. He moaned, laughed again and rubbed at his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “But I guess you already know that I'm corny. Me and my mint leaves.”  
  
“I like your mint leaves,” Pavel said, and they both laughed.   
  
“But, um,” Hikaru said, making his face serious again. “I'm really sorry about your sister. That's so terrible – you said it happened just last year?”  
  
“Yes. It has been like – waking up in another world. Maybe I did this to myself, put myself in a world where I don't belong. But I didn't belong in the world I knew anymore, without her, and that feeling was worse.”  
  
“I know,” Hikaru said, and he shook his head. “I mean – my mom died, when I was eleven. She was like, the one person, you know, who got me. Like, my dumb rebellions, she didn't act like I was just being difficult, even though I was, just trying to be different from my sisters in all these petty ways. She made me that scarf, you know, the one that says Chargers on it. She was always supporting my choices, even the small ones, in these, like, quiet ways.”   
  
“Oh, God!” Pavel said, mortified. “And I never returned the scarf to you, I'm so sorry.” He cursed himself in Russian, mashing his hands over his eyes, and Hikaru touched his foot to Pavel's under the table.  
  
“It's okay,” he said, grinning when Pavel removed his hands. “I'm sure you've taken good care of it.”  
  
“I – I have, I promise, it's at my apartment, nothing has happened to it, I'll give it back to you tonight –”  
  
“It's okay, really,” Hikaru said, holding up a hand to calm Pavel down. “I kind of liked the idea that you had it all this time.”  
  
“Why?” Pavel asked, and he wanted to cover his eyes with his hands again, because it was a rude question. Hikaru shrugged and picked up his menu.  
  
“I don't know,” he said. “I guess it's because you're obviously not from here, but – you seemed kind of – motherless, too.” He rolled his eyes at himself. “Sorry,” he said. “I say weird, insulting shit when I'm drunk, apparently.”  
  
“It's not insulting,” Pavel said. Their feet were still touching under the table, just barely, as if by accident, though Pavel could sense that Hikaru was conscious of this, too. “I am kind of motherless. My mother is a brilliant scientist – Olivia Koulikovsky, do you know her?”  
  
Hikaru's eyes widened in a way that told Pavel that he did.   
  
“That – she's your mother?” he said.   
  
“Yes.” Pavel took a long drink from his wine. “She kept her maiden name.”  
  
“I have like, eight of her lectures downloaded on my PADD from class,” Hikaru said, laughing. “My first year physics teacher was a big fan.”  
  
“Mmm, well. She was not a big fan of motherhood. I think she wanted to be, but she felt excluded by how close me and Polina were. Polina was more like my mother. She comforted me when I cried. My mother – she would try to explain to me why I was crying. Not unkindly, but that's just the way she is. She would not have knit me a scarf when she could have pulled a perfectly functional one from the replicator. What did your mother do?”  
  
“She was a second grade teacher,” Hikaru said. He grinned. “She would let me and my sisters help design the bulletin board displays in her classroom. I always had these grand visions of how they would look in my head, how they would impress her, then it would be this rumpled mess of green tissue paper that didn't look anything like the rain forest, and I would pout, but she'd act like it was great anyway. Kids can always tell when adults are lying to be nice, you know?”  
  
“Always,” Pavel said. “My father is like this still. He says he knows that my sister is _with me_. Well, maybe he does believe that sort of thing. She was like him – my sister, Polina – she would believe that Atlantis existed if someone found a rock under the water and told her it had been part of a road. She was too smart for that sort of thing, but she would argue for anything based on faith, just to torture me, I think.”   
  
“Just to be different from you, maybe,” Hikaru said. “Like me and the Chargers.” He grinned.  
  
“Yes, like that,” Pavel said, and he had to smile down at his plate when the tip of Hikaru's boot moved, very subtly, against the side of his shoe.   
  
They talked so much that the waiter had to come back twice because they weren't ready to order; they had glanced down nervously at their menus a few times, but neither of them had managed to actually read them. Eventually, they both ordered lobster tails.   
  
“I'm paying for this, by the way,” Hikaru said as they both dug in.   
  
“It's too expensive,” Pavel said, shaking his head.  
  
“No way. I've wanted to buy you dinner for, like, ever.” Hikaru laughed. His eyelids were a little heavy; they'd made their way through most of a bottle of wine at that point, and Pavel was beginning to get the impression that Hikaru was a bit of a lightweight.   
  
“Let me buy you coffee after dinner, at least,” Pavel said, mostly because he didn't want Hikaru getting any sleepier, didn't want the evening to end. “Just to be ironic, or something.”  
  
“Or something.” Hikaru beamed. He was so cute, a teasing glimpse of something that, even in these small doses, had never failed to make Pavel happy. “Okay.”   
  
Hikaru wouldn't tell Pavel how much the dinner cost, and they laughed about it as they left the restaurant, Pavel tugging on Hikaru's arm, bugging him about it only for the excuse to touch him. Their shoulders bumped as they made their way to a coffee shop nearby, and when they ordered, Hikaru whispered criticisms of the boy working the counter in Pavel's ear.   
  
“Not as cute as you, either,” Hikaru muttered, and Pavel's laugh came out like a surprised squawk. He paid for the coffee, thanked the irritated-looking boy, and pushed the cup into Hikaru's hand.  
  
“Drink this,” Pavel said. “It will cure your beer goggles.”  
  
“Beer goggles.” Hikaru scoffed wetly. “I've thought you were cute when I was stone cold sober.”  
  
“Really?” Pavel was still grinning as if this were all a joke, his heart pounding, the coffee cup burning his hand.   
  
“Why do you think I wanted to spend my last night on Earth with you?” Hikaru asked, suddenly looking kind of sad and desperate, as if he'd been screaming something at the top of his lungs for a long time, going unheard and finally losing his voice. Pavel made an abortive noise in the back of his throat.   
  
“How long is your mission?” Pavel asked, the crowd that swirled around them and the sounds of the coffee shop blurring into irrelevance. He'd been having such a good time that he'd managed to forget that Hikaru was leaving in the morning. Hikaru's face fell, and he licked his lips, looking down at Pavel's boots.  
  
“Five years,” he said, and the words were so indistinct that Pavel wanted to think he'd misheard, but they seemed to stick into his chest, shrapnel that would always live under his skin.  
  
“Five – oh.” Pavel walked away, not sure where he was going. He wanted to set his coffee down somewhere, but all the tables in the shop were overflowing, most of them full of laughing cadets. “That's a long time.”  
  
“Can we go somewhere?” Hikaru asked. He sounded like he would cry. Pavel nodded, dazed, and walked back toward his apartment, because it was the only place in the city that he really knew, other than the coffee shop where he worked.   
  
They sipped their coffee on the way there, and Hikaru talked about his mission. They would visit galaxies on the outer reaches, explore uncharted planets, make diplomatic pit stops. It was the life Pavel had envisioned for the two of them in his fantasies about their trajectory through the Academy and on into space, but Hikaru would be embarking on it without him. It was insane that this should come, after all this time, as a surprise.   
  
“This is my place,” Pavel said when they came to his building. “It's not very nice.” He was feeling gloomy again, wondering if they would say goodbye here. He'd been quiet for most of the walk from the coffee shop.   
  
“My stuff's all packed in boxes,” Hikaru said. “Plus, the dorms are crazy right now, all kinds of parties – I just wanted somewhere quiet, where we could talk, you know?” He scratched at the back of his head. Pavel had noticed that he did this when he was nervous, or uncertain. “Do I sound like a creep?” he asked.   
  
“No,” Pavel said. “Come up. I have some crackers.”  
  
The words _I have some crackers_ seemed to follow him up the stairs, settling onto him like a theme: this last exchange with Hikaru would be necessarily inane, because what more could they hope for when he was leaving in the morning? Hikaru would go off to space and forget the coffee shop boy, and Pavel would run home to Russia, maybe attend the Conservatory where his mother taught, visit Polly's grave with his father on Sundays. As they came into his room, he felt as if the night had already ended anticlimactically, and he broke into a cold sweat when he saw the tasseled end of Hikaru's scarf poking out from among his blankets.  
  
“There's a bottle of vodka over there,” he said, frantically pointing toward his tiny kitchenette. Hikaru turned, and while he was distracted, Pavel snatched the scarf from the bed, hoping Hikaru hadn't spotted it. He folded it up and presented it to Hikaru, as if reclaiming it was the only reason he'd come and they might as well get it over with. Hikaru accepted it, looking sad.  
  
“I don't really need anything else to drink, but thanks,” he said. “You said there were crackers?”  
  
Pavel dumped the crackers onto a plate and carried them over to the bed, where they sat with the plate between them, their unlaced boots dumped on the floor, the blinds pulled open to show them the cloudless sky that Hikaru would disappear into in the morning. Hikaru was talking fast, obviously anxious, and Pavel was trying to listen, the dread of another painful separation filling the room like cold water.   
  
“Are you nervous at all?” Pavel asked. “About tomorrow? It's so – sudden. You graduate and off you go.”  
  
“Yeah,” Hikaru said. “That's their system – apparently, there used to be three months between graduation and deployment, but cadets would kinda go nuts, you know, they'd enjoy that last freedom a little too much, and it would compromise their training. So now you get shoved into space the day after your exams. Kinda cruel, I know, but mostly I'm excited. This is what I've been working for.”   
  
“You'll miss your family, I'm sure,” Pavel said. Hikaru shrugged.  
  
“Yeah,” he said. “To be honest, I'm not really that close with them these days. My dad lives twenty minutes away, but I don't see him that often, and my sisters are all over the place – two of them are already in space. We do video chats and stuff, but we've all got separate lives. I envy – what you had with your sister. It sounds like you guys were really close.”   
  
“Yes,” Pavel said, stung by this. “But that kind of attachment comes with a price. I feel pointless now that she's gone, like a shoe that's lost its mate. Like I might as well be thrown away, too.”   
  
It's the first time he's even allowed himself to think this, but it's so true that it makes him shiver. Hikaru reaches over the empty plate and takes Pavel's hands, so gently that Pavel is afraid to look at him. The scarf is looped around Hikaru's neck, and Pavel wants to press his face against it, against Hikaru's skin.   
  
“Sometimes, before I went into the coffee shop, I'd stand outside and look in the front window,” Hikaru said. “And most of the time you were just busy, serious-looking, but then sometimes you'd be staring into space, and I'd just stand out there watching you and wondering what you were so sad about. But then, when I walked inside, you'd light up, and I thought –” Hikaru paused, and Pavel stared at him, watched him swallow heavily. “I wanted to think, I mean, that seeing me actually made you happy, that you weren't just being nice.”  
  
“It did,” Pavel said. His voice was small, coming from a saved-up place that he hadn't accessed in a long time. “It did make me happy.” He laced his fingers through Hikaru's and scooted a bit closer, until the plate was pressed between their folded legs.   
  
“I feel like I know you,” Hikaru said, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Is that demented?”  
  
“I don't think so,” Pavel said, not positive that he knew what that word meant. He was pretty sure that it was something bad, and if Hikaru felt like he knew him, that wasn't the right word for the phenomenon.  
  
“Also, um,” Hikaru said. Pavel could feel Hikaru's heartbeat pounding against his palm as their hands pressed together more firmly. “I want you in my lap.”   
  
Pavel nodded, a whimpery noise escaping his lips as he climbed over the empty plate and into Hikaru's lap, straddling his hips. Their mouths crushed together, and Pavel's closed his eyes as Hikaru's tongue slid against his, his mouth soaking wet for the kiss, which went on and on, through panted breath and clicking teeth, making Pavel feel like his body was blissfully free from his mind. Hikaru leaned back until Pavel was basically on top of him, his elbows framing Hikaru's head. They were both hard, rutting and moaning, touching each other's hair.   
  
“I would have paid fifty bucks a cup to see you everyday,” Hikaru said, breathing the words into Pavel's mouth, and Pavel whined, mourning all the time they'd lost. He pushed Hikaru's cadet jacket from his shoulders.  
  
“Why?” Pavel asked. “Because I looked sad? Because I was – cute?”  
  
“Because you looked at me like you knew me, too,” Hikaru said, shaking his head. Pavel felt like it was true, there in his suddenly not-lonely room, like no two people in the world knew each other as well they knew each other, and like it had been true even before this evening, maybe even before they first left the coffee shop together. It was the kind of thing Polina would have asked him to stop trying to figure out, so he did, pulling his clothes off instead, his mouth returning to Hikaru's neck between every sleeve and pant leg that he fought free from.  
  
“Have you done this?” Hikaru asked when he had rolled on top, Pavel clutching a bottle of lotion in a probably clueless fashion. Pavel nodded, and Hikaru seemed to know that he was lying, his eyes softening. He didn't say so, just kissed Pavel softly over the bridge of his nose.  
  
“Okay,” Hikaru whispered, kissing him again, at the corner of his eye, then on his cheek. “Okay.”  
  
Pavel clung so hard, first while he was on his back and then when Hikaru pulled him up into his lap, his hands tight and strong on Pavel's hips, lifting him up and bringing him back down to hear him cry out again. Pavel couldn't believe how good it was; he'd thought it would _hurt_ , but the burn and the pressure were like things he had needed and lived without. Hikaru's grip loosened, and he let Pavel ride him at his own pace, which was frantic and desperate, Pavel cursing the universe in broken Russian for his inability to fuck himself down onto Hikaru faster or harder, to get any more of Hikaru inside him. What he could get was still enough to make him come hard all over Hikaru's chest, and he would have been embarrassed if he'd a modicum of consciousness left as his orgasm tore out of him. Hikaru moaned as Pavel arched back and shuddered with the last of his release, and held him steady when he fell limp in Hikaru's arms.  
  
“So – so many times,” Hikaru panted as he pushed up into Pavel, cradling him against his chest, letting Pavel drool onto his shoulder. “Thought about – what you'd be like, how you'd feel – can't drink tea anymore without – with – without thinking about fucking you over that counter.”   
  
Hikaru's hand tightened on the back of Pavel's neck when he came, and he cried out as if he'd taken an arrow to his back, driving up hard. Pavel shouted, too, feebly now, holding on to Hikaru while they both rode out his orgasm. He listened to Hikaru pant as he came down, and felt his heartbeat begin to slow, pumping against Pavel's chest. Hikaru played with the curls at the back of Pavel's neck, still holding him, still inside him, and Pavel felt as if he could drift to sleep with his head on Hikaru's shoulder.  
  
“Sleep here,” Pavel begged, his voice soft and broken. He was too desperate for a few more hours with Hikaru to worry about his pride. Hikaru nodded, petting him, his breath slowing.   
  
“I want to pack you in my bag,” he said, whispering this in Pavel's ear as if it were a secret plan that he might really try to enact.   
  
_I'll come and find you_ , Pavel thought, too serious about the promise to dare to make it out loud. _In space, anywhere. Nothing will ever keep me from you for long_.  
  
They ate more crackers, naked in bed, and Hikaru wrapped the scarf around Pavel's head like a turban. They were both giddy in the aftermath, pinching each other and wrestling around on the bed, trying to forget what the morning would bring. When they'd lost their second wind they put their heads together on Pavel's pillow and pulled the blankets up to their chins, scooting close for warmth. Pavel did all the crazy things he'd dreamed about while staring at Hikaru over the counter: he licked Hikaru's nose, pushed the tips of his fingers into Hikaru's mouth, rubbed his bottom lip until it was swollen and pink. He felt like he'd go crazy with how good and simultaneously terrible he felt: this was the thrill of contentment that he had finally won, but it was also something that was losing, getting closer to gone with every minute that passed.   
  
“You're a runner,” Hikaru said, squeezing the tight muscle of Pavel's left thigh as it slid between Hikaru's legs. “I've seen you. In your little shorts.”   
  
“I wish I had seen you fence,” Pavel said. He'd looked up videos on his PADD and tried to imagine that the men inside the white armor were Hikaru, but it wasn't the same. Hikaru would easily outmatch all of the fencers he'd seen in all of those videos, he was sure.   
  
“It's actually pretty dorky,” Hikaru said. “You'd probably laugh.”  
  
“I wouldn't laugh.” Pavel couldn't understand how Hikaru could see himself as dorky. He was awkward sometimes, maybe a bit prone to eccentricities, but that was all part of his ultimate perfection.   
  
“I can't believe I have to leave in the morning,” Hikaru said when his eyes began to drift shut, the world going still outside, all of the celebrating cadets passed out in somebody's bed.   
  
“What time?” Pavel asked. His own eyelids were getting heavy, and he hated that he had to sleep, though the idea of sleeping in this drafty bed with Hikaru's arms around him made him weak with happiness that ached, because, even asleep, he wouldn't be able to forget how temporary this was.  
  
“My shuttle leaves at nine AM,” Hikaru said. Pavel nodded, and reached over him to set the alarm for seven o'clock in the morning. It would give them time to say goodbye before Hikaru went back to his room to shower, change, and pack the last of his things for space.  
  
Hikaru was fighting to keep his eyes open, and Pavel wanted to tell him that he didn't have to, that he should rest for the big day he would have tomorrow, but he couldn't make himself do it. He wanted every last second, their eyelashes fluttering together, Hikaru's breath so warm against his lips.   
  
“Why did you never ask me to meet you after my shift?” Pavel asked. “After that first time? Was I too cold? I didn't mean to be.”   
  
“I guess I thought you didn't really like me that much,” Hikaru said. “I mean – I figured, if you did, you would have done the asking next time, or something. I didn't want to bug you. I was the one coming to your shop every day – you didn't have a choice, you worked there. Sometimes I worried that you thought I was this pathetic idiot who was practically stalking you.”  
  
“ _Dammit_ ,” Pavel whispered in Russian. He wracked his mind for a quick theory of time travel, thinking about the nights like this that he could have had, Hikaru's hot kisses keeping him awake.  
  
“I could message you,” Hikaru said, his eyes slipping shut. “We could video chat.”   
  
“No,” Pavel said, a fragile structure collapsing in his chest. He didn't want to be an obligation, someone Hikaru had to check in with, interrupting his adventure in space. “It wouldn't be the same.”   
  
“The same as what?” Hikaru said, laughing a little. His eyes fell shut, and Pavel could see that he was basically talking in his sleep. “We never even – got started, really.”   
  
“Right,” Pavel said. “Never.” He watched Hikaru's shoulders relax as he gave in to sleep, and wrapped his arm around Hikaru's neck, cradling him while he slept. Pavel kissed Hikaru's head, breathing in the scent of his hair, knowing that Hikaru would forget him when he was shooting through the stars, collecting gem-toned flowers and fighting off hostile aliens with a sword. It wouldn't matter; Pavel would prefer to be forgotten for now, so that when he found Hikaru again, they could start over without the baggage of a failed attempt at a long distance relationship.  
  
He fell asleep feeling confident, invincible in Hikaru's arms, certain that they would be reunited in some far off place, someday. When he woke up, the glow of the sunrise crushed his spirit. Hikaru was rousing slowly, moaning and rubbing at his eyes. Pavel stayed still on the pillow, watching him hoist himself up onto his elbow. Hikaru looked down at him, his eyes puffy with exhaustion. He cupped Pavel's face and rubbed his cheek with his thumb.  
  
“Just looking at you,” Hikaru said. His voice was deep, distressed by sleep in a way that made the words sound heavy. “Just seeing your face. You made me happy every day.”  
  
“Hikaru,” Pavel said, trying to beg him to stop, to not make the moment when their bodies slid apart under the blankets any harder.   
  
“You in your little apron,” Hikaru said. He smiled sadly, still stroking Pavel's cheek. Pavel was determined not to cry, and he bit down on the end of his tongue. “And the way you said _sank you_ to all the people in line in front of me. I used to be disappointed when the line wasn't very long, because I wouldn't get to hear you say that ten times before I got to the counter.”   
  
Pavel pressed his lips down around a sob, swallowing it. Polina had promised him that he would fall in love as hard as she had with the boy who drove his hover bike too fast. Pavel had thought that love was only for people like Polly, who were willing to believe in Atlantis, and God, and the way that a pair of green-eyed twins could look at each other across a crowded room and have whole conversations, complete with sarcasm and inside jokes, without even needing to quirk their lips.  
  
“Don't go,” Pavel said, keeping the words as quiet as he could. Hikaru kissed him, holding his face with both hands, and Pavel opened to him, letting him take everything.   
  
“Keep this,” Hikaru said when he pulled back, his breath choppy and his eyes wet. He wrapped the scarf around Pavel's neck, pulling the long ends down to cover his chest. “Until we see each other again, okay? Keep it safe for me.”  
  
Pavel nodded, chewing his lips to keep the deluge back. Hikaru kissed him softly on the lips – for the last time, Pavel thought, wondering if it was worse to know or to be surprised. He often thought about the last time he saw Polina, how he'd barely paid attention as she sat at her vanity, chatting about the play she was forcing her boyfriend to take her to, how he would probably hate it, how the writer been the lover of some famous and long dead pop star. Pavel could only see that last image of his sister from the corner of his eye in his memory, because he'd been trying to read an article about transwarp beaming on his PADD, Polly just a familiar smudge of color at the periphery of his vision, her hands moving in her hair as she pinned up her curls.   
  
So Pavel wouldn't let himself look away as Hikaru dressed to leave. He got out of bed, too, put on his underwear and stood barefoot, handing Hikaru articles of clothing from the floor. He wanted to keep the cadet jacket, one of Hikaru's gold-toed socks, everything. He held on to the ends of the scarf, pulling it tight against the back of his neck.   
  
“I have to go,” Hikaru said. “I've got to get my stuff together, and –”  
  
“I know,” Pavel said. He made himself smile, and it helped, pushing the tears back. “It's okay.”   
  
“God,” Hikaru said, staring. “I wish I had my PADD. We weren't allowed to bring them to the exam. If I – I would take a picture of you.”  
  
Pavel looked down at himself. He was sleep-mussed, in nothing but the scarf and his boxer shorts. He wanted a picture of Hikaru, too, but he didn't go for his PADD.   
  
“We should try to forget each other,” he decided. “For now. It would be too hard. Don't you think? Since it was only one night, really.”   
  
Hikaru shrugged, and looked down at his feet. Pavel was sure that Hikaru realized this, too. They wouldn't have the excuse of tea for seeing each other every morning. They wouldn't know each other once Hikaru was in space and Pavel was still selling coffee, here on Earth.   
  
“I don't even know your last name,” Hikaru said, still staring at the floor.  
  
“It's probably better that way,” Pavel said.   
  
Hikaru didn't say anything. He headed for the door. Pavel wanted to set him free, didn't want to spoil the realization of his dream of going to space by anchoring him to something on Earth that hadn't even properly begun. He was shivering; his room was always so cold.   
  
“But,” Hikaru said, turning back from the door. “How will I find you?”  
  
“Just look for someone who's wearing this scarf,” Pavel said, trying to smile again, to make a joke of it. Hikaru bit down on his lip, nodded, and turned toward the door.  
  
“Alright,” he said, his hand on the knob. “You're right – I mean. You're right. Just, um. I'll see you later.”   
  
It was a dumb but appropriate thing to say. Pavel stood in the middle of the room, his feet planted as he watched Hikaru slip out the door without looking back, then listened to his footsteps as he made his way down the hall. He went to the bed and knelt beside the window, watching as Hikaru walked out of the building, then broke into a run, headed back toward the Academy. He waited for the sobs he'd been holding back to come, but they didn't, not until he realized that he was late for work, that it would be the first of many days at the coffee shop when he would stubbornly watch the front window for Hikaru, looking up from his work every time he heard the bell over the door and chastising himself when he realized that it was someone else, and that it always would be.  
  
-  
  
Pavel applied to Starfleet Academy that summer, and was accepted for entry in the fall. He finished in record time, won a marathon, and upon graduation was granted access to Starfleet's basic personnel records.   
  
Hikaru was not a common name, and there was only one person with that name on active duty when Pavel searched the database. His picture matched the one that Pavel still held in his heart, his rank was Lieutenant, his birthday was on the fifth of October, and his status was _Missing in Action_.   
  
-

Two years later, Pavel was pulled off of his alpha shift rotation as navigator of the _Enterprise_ and put on special assignment. He boarded a shuttle with only one other lieutenant – a pretty Orion girl named Gaila – and the shift pilot took them to a space station, where they boarded a non-Federation vehicle that was bringing a shipment of live chickens to a settlement moon in a neighboring galaxy. It was around then that Pavel began to suspect that the top secret nature of this mission wasn't just for the sake of a run of the mill hostage extraction.   
  
Pavel was not only the alpha shift navigator for the _Enterprise_ , but also their go-to sniper. He had taken out kidnappers and politicians alike with a device he'd invented himself, basically a long-range phaser set to stun and fitted with an energy disperser that acted like a net, also stunning any accomplices who rushed in to see what had struck their leader. It was safe enough to use in close range of hostages and subtle enough to have remained a secret so far. Pavel had the weapon on his belt when he disembarked on Nanos-4 with Gaila, who had been very talkative in the shuttle but still hadn't disclosed her role in this mission that they hadn't even been briefed on yet.   
  
“We're here to take photographs of the ruins,” Pavel told the man who met them at the moon's rickety shuttle station. It was the story they'd been asked to give to their contact man, and this seemed to be him: short of stature, balding, and heavily Scottish-accented. They were supposed to tell him that they were newlyweds on their honeymoon, but upon laying eyes on Nano-4, Pavel didn't think anyone would believe that story. The first word that came to mind when surveying the capitol city was _drippy_. The capital was basically just a trading post, a setting-off point for homesteaders who would be braving the muddy terrain of the moon's swampy forests. The moon did house a set of famous ruins that were said to have been left behind by an race of time travelers, but Pavel suspected that they didn't need their story for the man who met them, who introduced himself as Scotty.   
  
“Is that your nickname?” Gaila asked as they climbed into the sidecar on Scotty's hover bike. “Because you're Scottish?”  
  
“Oddly enough, my last name is actually Scott,” Scotty said. He seemed as charmed by Gaila as the pilot of their Federation shuttle and the driver of the chicken ship had. Pavel liked her, too; she was different from most of the officers he'd served with, who were pretty stoic on the job, as Pavel himself usually was.   
  
“So it _is_ a nickname,” Scotty said, holding up a finger to emphasize his point. “But not because I'm Scottish.”   
  
Gaila giggled, and Pavel settled in for the ride. It would be an hour to their rendezvous point, if his map readings were correct, and they usually were. When he joined Starfleet he'd planned on becoming a pilot, thinking that would give him the best chance of someday meeting Hikaru again, but he'd quickly discovered that he was more adept at and interested in navigation, and the idea of someday being the navigator to Hikaru's pilot had suited him just fine. He scoffed to himself at the thought, slinging his elbow over the sidecar and watching the mossy trees fly past. He'd designed his whole life around what was essentially a one-night stand that he'd had when he was barely seventeen, only to discover that the man he'd built his lonely, teenage obsession around had disappeared. He still checked Hikaru's Starfleet file from time to time, and still remembered the way his chest had seemed to fill with granite on the day that he checked the file and found that Hikaru's status had been changed from _Missing in Action_ to _Missing, Presumed Dead_.  
  
“We'll be briefed when we get there, right?” Pavel asked Scotty, wondering if there was any chance that he could get at least some information out of him before they arrived. He didn't like this, being ambushed with his mission after arriving right in the thick of it, but that was how the Federation operated when it came to these covert ops.   
  
“Thas' right,” Scotty called back, and when he said no more, Pavel closed his eyes, settling in for the trip. He didn't want to see anymore depressingly wet scenery; his captain had told him to 'pack for a duration,' which could mean that he'd be here for a week, or for well over a year. Pavel had packed Hikaru's old scarf, just in case. As pathetic as it was to think back on how his teenage crush had shaped his life, the scarf was still his most reliable bedmate. Pavel had made a few stabs at what might be called romance during his career in Starfleet, but he hadn't even come close to consecutive nights in bed with anything that didn't say CHARGERS on it.   
  
He was twenty-two years old, a decorated officer, bitterly estranged from his parents, and known for his talent at remaining too distant to even glimpse in situations that required phaser blasts. His best friend was still his dead sister, who he sometimes caught himself actually conversing with out loud. A change of scenery was in order, but Nanos-4 was not what he had hoped for. So far, it seemed like the kind of place that would only nurture his tendency to isolate himself from others.   
  
“Here we are,” Scotty said after Pavel had been dozing for an hour, trying to keep his head from falling onto Gaila's shoulder. He opened his eyes, but all he saw was more dripping trees and bubbling swampland. Before he could ask if the base was underground, dreading an affirmative answer, the hover bike shot up twenty stories into the sky, making Gaila shriek with delight.   
  
“Treehouses!” she said when they appeared.   
  
In the upper tree line, there was less dampness, and a sunset spreading through the sky that stretched over the fog that coated the lower levels of the planet. Pavel grinned to himself as they sped through connected rope bridges, past wooden dwellings with communications satellites on their roofs. There were a few people around, but the base didn't seem crowded, or dirty, or old, like many of the confidential ops bases Pavel had worked out of.   
  
“Here's the captain's quarters,” Scotty said, parking his hover bike outside the central tree house, which was the largest one in the base. “He'll be waiting for ya. A warning, though – he, ah, can be a little – dramatic, shall we say?”  
  
Pavel wasn't sure how to take this, but he nodded as he climbed off the bike. Gaila followed him across the bridge that led to the captain's door, and they lifted their hands to knock together.   
  
“Now that we're here,” Gaila said, keeping her voice low, “I guess we can tell each other what we specialize in.”  
  
“Long range hostage negotiation,” Pavel said, patting his homemade weapon. “You?”  
  
“Close range espionage,” Gaila said. “Undercover stuff.”  
  
“Interesting,” Pavel said, frowning, but he didn't have long to wonder how these two skills might fit together in a place like this. The captain threw open the door, and they both jumped to attention, throwing their shoulders back. The captain was much younger than Pavel had expected, and rather unshaven, wearing only a sweat-stained white t-shirt and cargo pants that he he was belting up as he stood staring at them. He had piercing blue eyes that made Pavel nervous.   
  
“Lieutenants Chekov and Vina reporting, sir,” Pavel said. “We're from the _Ent_ –”  
  
“I know where you're from,” he said. “I'm James Kirk, but you're to call me Jim around here. You never know who might be listening, and as far as the locals know, we're a hippie colony. Get in here.”   
  
Pavel and Gaila walked inside. Kirk's quarters were dimly lit and somewhat ransacked, his bedclothes in disarray, a mosquito net half-deployed. There was clothing on the floor, and Kirk kicked it aside as they walked to a large desk that was strewn with data reports that were blinking a variety of attention signals.   
  
“Take a seat,” Kirk said. “Something to drink?” He grabbed an unmarked bottle of coppery liquid and poured some into two wooden cups before they could answer, shoving them across the desk.   
  
“What we've got here is a highly, highly sensitive situation,” Kirk said. He poured some of the liquor for himself and threw it back. Pavel took a taste of his, then set it down, trying not to cough at the strength of it.   
  
“You were both selected for your history of successful discretion,” Kirk said. “Nanos-4, the moon that we're on, is uninteresting in most aspects: a settlement moon where lots come cheap, underpopulated, swampy, three out of four seasons are rainy ones. But the planet we're orbiting, Jasx'u, is embroiled in a civil war that's been going on for seven years. Why haven't you heard of this war? Because the Federation doesn't want it out there that Jasx'u is unstable. It would make their bitharium deposits very vulnerable to outside, conquering forces – Klingons, for example – and I think we all know what kind of weapons those deposits could fuel, and how important it is to the Federation that we maintain control of that kind of technology for as long as we can.” Kirk grinned. “I hope I'm not blowing your minds,” he said. “Some people come in here pretty naïve about how the Fed actually operates.”   
  
“We're perfectly aware,” Gaila said coolly, and Pavel nodded. Kirk studied them for a moment, as if to try and figure out if they were lying, then poured himself more to drink, seeming satisfied.  
  
“Good,” he said. “We've got an important job here, supporting the standing government on Jasx'u, who are willing to continue to exclusively provide the Federation with bitharium, and keeping a handle on the rebel uprising, who would sell the stuff to the highest bidder, damn the consequences. But like I said, this is all pretty goddamn sensitive. We control who comes and goes on the planet. We run interference on double agents who are trying to infiltrate the government higher ups. Not everyone is cut out for this type of work. I'm hoping that you two are confident that you will be.”  
  
“Absolutely, sir,” Gaila said, and Pavel nodded again. He wasn't ready to kiss this guy's ass yet; he could already see the dramatic streak that Scotty had mentioned. He was excited about the prospect of a long-term mission like this, working outside of a planet that was undergoing civil war, intervening when possible but mostly staying in the shadows. It was the most interesting assignment he'd been given in awhile.   
  
“Alright, then,” Kirk said. “Welcome to my team.” He lifted the bottle and drank from it. “I think everyone's gathering in the meeting hall for dinner, if you're hungry. Follow me – I'll introduce you to the others.”   
  
The sky was blazing orange as they walked to the communal area, where Pavel could smell food cooking: what smelled like bread baking, and some kind of meat, rosemary-scented. His stomach growled, but his considerable social anxiety killed his appetite as soon as they walked into the dining hall, where the other members of the team were gathered, laughing and passing out plates.  
  
“Everybody,” Kirk said, clapping. “Gather round – I want you to meet our new meat. This is Gaila Vina – undercover agent. Spock, she's going to be a big help with your Bluxton research. And this is Pavel Chekov, weapons and navigation specialist, and the most highly-touted sniper in the Federation. Cupcake, I know you're glad to hear that.”  
  
“Will you quit fucking introducing me as Cupcake?” a big guy sitting at the table said, narrowing his eyes. Pavel blanched at the address of a captain in this manner, but Kirk just grinned and winked at the guy.  
  
“So, like I said, that's Cupcake,” Kirk said, pointing to him. “Head of security. Next to him we've got Uhura, communications expert. As you can see, she's with child.”   
  
“Wow,” Uhura said, raising her eyebrows. “You're extra charming tonight.”  
  
“Someone bought himself a case of moonshine in town yesterday,” a grumpy-looking man said, narrowing his eyes at Kirk, who again just seemed amused by his crew's surliness.   
  
“That mean-looking son of a bitch is Bones,” Kirk said. “He's who you'll want to talk to if you come down with a case of swamp foot.”  
  
“Feel free to call me Dr. McCoy,” Bones said, glowering at Pavel, who tried not to wilt under his stare. “Not all of us here are as fond of nicknames as Jim.”   
  
“Ignore that,” Kirk said, waving his hand through the air. “He's in a bad mood. You'll find that's often the case. Moving on – next to Bones is Spock, father of Uhura's child.”   
  
“I am also Jim's second in command,” Spock said, without a trace of humor. Pavel noticed his ears and grinned; he'd worked with a Vulcan pilot on the _Enterprise_ , and generally found their disposition relatable and refreshing, though it could also be frustrating at times.   
  
“So, I guess that's about it,” Kirk said. “Except – wait, where's the master chef?”  
  
“Quit confusing the new people by introducing us as your servants,” someone said, and electricity shot down Pavel's spine, as sharp as icicles but warm enough to unfreeze him. He turned to see a man coming in from an attached porch that housed several ovens. He was wiping his hands on a towel, grinning, until he saw Pavel. When their eyes met, the smile drained slowly from his face, replaced with open-mouthed shock.   
  
“Hikaru,” Pavel said, but the name didn't actually make any sound as it left his mouth. It was dry in the back of his throat, stuck there. Hikaru stared at him, and, just as slowly as it had gone, his smile returned.   
  
“This is Hikaru Sulu, resident cook,” Kirk said. “And that's a role he volunteered for, God knows why. He's our wings, the pilot who'll take you to and from Jasx'u. Best pilot I've ever worked with, so you'll be in good hands.”   
  
Pavel didn't have to be told. He hadn't forgotten those hands, the way they had fit his hips. His breath came faster, and his mouth hung open. Hikaru's smile widened. He winked.   
  
“Nice to meet you,” he said.   
  
“So, I guess now would be as good a time as any to tell you,” Kirk said, turning back to Pavel and Gaila. “Welcome to the afterlife! One of the qualifications of accepting this mission, which they don't generally tell you about when they offer it, is being declared missing, presumed dead. Nobody can know we're here, and, well, not to be indelicate, but you two were also selected because you don't exactly have a lot of close personal relationships, as far as the Federation can tell.”   
  
Pavel huffed, his vision blurring. Hikaru was alive, with flour stains on his t-shirt and a puffy white scar over his right eye. He hadn't been missing, only here, always here, waiting to smile at Pavel as if he'd known this would happen. Pavel walked over to the table and sat down heavily beside Cupcake, who patted his shoulder.  
  
“Don't feel bad, little buddy,” he said. “You'll make plenty of friends here on the island of misfit toys.”   
  
Pavel tried to act as normal as possible at dinner, sitting between Cupcake and Gaila, who was chatty and prone to loud, barking laughter that made Pavel jump. Hikaru was down at the other end of the table, casting secret looks at Pavel, making him blush when their eyes met. The sun went down and the bugs sang in the trees, a ring of torches around the communal hut keeping them away.   
  
“We don't exactly have extra huts lined up for you two,” Kirk said as everyone pitched in to clear the dishes. “So you'll have to bunk with someone. Bones' quarters are empty most nights –”  
  
“Jim, I swear to God,” Bones said, looking like he would pitch the plate he was holding at Kirk's head.   
  
“Pavel can stay with me,” Hikaru said, and Pavel looked over at him, still feeling as if he were dreaming. He smiled, and Hikaru smiled back, and it was if Pavel had stepped through that closing door back in San Francisco, followed him out into the hall and ended up here. The years that had passed felt so far away.   
  
“Okay, so Hikaru thinks Jailbait's cute,” Kirk said, and Hikaru pitched a dish towel at him. “That's settled. That leaves Gaila with the all-important Scotty versus Cupcake decision.”   
  
“Your inappropriateness never ceases to amaze me,” Uhura says to Kirk, shaking her head. “Gaila, you're welcome to stay with me and Spock. We've got room.”   
  
“That's okay,” Gaila said. She was already practically leaning into Scotty's lap, trading sips from a bottle of what Bones had referred to as moonshine. “I think I'll crash at Scotty's place tonight. He promised to tell me how he came up with the transwarp beaming theory.”   
  
“It's a rather fascinating story, actually,” Scotty said.  
  
“Don't tell me,” Hikaru said from the basin where he was washing his plate. “You fell off the toilet while you were hanging a clock.” He turned when everyone stared at him in silence. “Shit, never mind. Obviously no one here appreciates classic movies.”   
  
“That's something you should go ahead and note about Hikaru,” Kirk said, throwing an arm around Pavel's shoulders. “If you're going to be rooming with him and all. Something has to be at least, like, a billion years old for him to remotely appreciate it. Jailbait excluded, apparently.”   
  
“You are not allowed to call him Jailbait,” Hikaru said, turning to glare at Kirk. “I forbid it.”  
  
“Incidentally, J.B.,” Kirk said, dropping his voice and hooking Pavel in closer. “Hikaru here is the only one of these clowns who I haven't come up with a good nickname for. Sure, sometimes I call him Chef, or Heek, but nothing has really stuck. So observe carefully, as his roommate, and get back to me when you've come up with a good one.”  
  
“Um. Yes – sir?”  
  
“Ignore him,” Hikaru said, grabbing Pavel's arm. “Come on. You must be tired.”   
  
“I'm into this budding romance of yours, Sulu, not gonna lie,” Kirk called as Hikaru and Pavel walked out into the drizzle of rain that had begun. “You guys look good together!”  
  
“He's just joking,” Hikaru said as they made their way across the rope bridges. Pavel was speechless, and couldn't stop staring. Hikaru was still holding his arm.   
  
“The – the bridges can get slippery when it's raining, so you have to be careful,” Hikaru said. His voice was shaking.   
  
“I thought you were dead,” Pavel said. It hurt to say it, and to remember how real it had felt, how omnipresent, even years after they separated.  
  
“I know,” Hikaru said. He wasn't looking at Pavel, not even when they came to a hut on the edge of the tree fort base. He opened the door and led Pavel inside, into the dark, where Pavel could hear his own loud breathing over the sound of the rain as it came down harder outside. Hikaru shuffled around, then appeared in the middle of the room, lighting a lantern that sat on a neat desk. His room was smaller than Kirk's, but much cleaner, everything in its place.   
  
“It wasn't like I could drop you a line to let you know I was okay,” Hikaru said. “Even if I wasn't under orders to play dead. You didn't give me your last name.”   
  
Pavel didn't know what to say. He was speaking to a ghost; he had become a ghost himself. He wanted to run into Hikaru's arms. He looked so sturdy, like the first solid thing Pavel had seen in five years. For so long, his hands had just passed right through everything he touched.   
  
“It's Chekov,” Pavel said, feeling like the breath was being choked from him, like the room was spinning, rain pinwheeling off the roof, shooting out in the dark.   
  
“Yeah, I guess I know that now,” Hikaru said. “Anyway, um. This is my room. I'm pretty well-organized, I guess, but I'm not weird about people touching my stuff. You can use my soap.” For a minute he looked like he would cry, eyebrows arching, but it passed. “There's only the one bed, but we can build one for you tomorrow. You can have it tonight. I'll sleep in the hammock.”  
  
“Hikaru,” Pavel said, but that was all that came to mind, so he shut his mouth again. Hikaru shrugged.   
  
“Um, in here there's a bathroom,” he said, showing Pavel a small, adjoining room with an open-air shower and a little room that housed a toilet. “I rigged this so that it gets hot water,” Hikaru said, gesturing to the shower, which was rather fancy looking, like something at a high end resort that was only designed to look like an authentic tree house shower. “It's, um. Solar powered.”  
  
“Hikaru,” Pavel said, trying again. “I – I – ”  
  
“What, Pavel?” Hikaru said, a little sharply, then his face softened. He shook his head. “Can I hug you?” he asked, and Pavel all but jumped into his arms.  
  
“ _God_ ,” Pavel whispered, in Russian, and it felt like praying. Hikaru moaned a little, as if he was able to translate well enough, and his arms tightened around Pavel, lifting him off the floor.   
  
“I've thought about you,” Hikaru said. “That night. The coffee shop – I've thought about all of it, out here, so much.”   
  
“Me too, me too,” Pavel said, pinching his eyes shut. He wasn't even sure if he was speaking Russian or Standard, and couldn't stop petting the back of Hikaru's neck, his other hand curling around the hem of Hikaru's flour-stained shirt. His eyes were wet. He never wanted to let go. Now he had a word for the thing he had been missing since Hikaru slid from his bed that morning: this man felt like his home.  
  
“So, um,” Hikaru said, pulling back, until the tip of his nose was resting against Pavel's. “Do you want to take a shower?”  
  
“Yeah,” Pavel said, and he pressed his lips over Hikaru's, moaning when Hikaru opened for him like he'd been waiting, too. Hikaru tasted like the bread from dinner, the past that had slipped through their fingers, and faintly like mint, and when Pavel put his arms around Hikaru's shoulders and jumped, Hikaru caught him, wrapping Pavel's legs around his waist, stumbling backward until they both fell to the bed.   
  
They rolled across the bed, unable to settle on yanking each other's clothes off or rutting against each other while grunting encouragement, so they did a little of both, until Pavel was coming in Hikaru's hand, which was inside the underwear that Pavel was still halfway wearing. Hikaru had been stripped of everything but his t-shirt and boxers, his pants bunched around his ankles as he ground down against Pavel's thigh. He growled his orgasm out as he sunk his teeth into the soft skin below Pavel's jaw, making him shout, leaving a mark. _Good_ , Pavel thought, because he wanted evidence left all over him. There hadn't been enough to run his fingers over, last time.   
  
They slumped over onto their sides and panted, studying each other quietly for awhile, touching their fingers to wet lips and damp hair. Pavel felt ready to kiss Hikaru for an hour, and he tried, licking into him until they lost their breath and their energy, still so close that their eyelashes bumped together while they recovered.   
  
“I still feel like I know you,” Hikaru said. “Like you're just, I don't know. Mine.”   
  
“You do,” Pavel said. “I am.”   
  
“I guess you can't argue with fate.” Hikaru grinned. “Did you join Starfleet the day I left?”  
  
“I applied,” Pavel said, “The day you left, yes. Joined five weeks later. I have your Chargers scarf.”   
  
“You'd better,” Hikaru said, smiling so wide that Pavel thought the rain would stop, that the clouds would part. “Do you still have that little apron?”   
  
“No.” Pavel laughed. “I don't serve coffee for fun on off days.”   
  
“Yeah, but, listen,” Hikaru said. He rolled Pavel onto his back and propped himself up over him, licked the tears from the corners of his eyes. Pavel hadn't realized that they were leaking. “I had this fantasy, okay, where you served me tea in that apron and nothing else.”   
  
“What, I wasn't wearing little cat ears and a collar, too?” Pavel said, and Hikaru laughed. They tackled each other, pretending that they had the energy to play fight until they collapsed again.   
  
“This is so weird,” Hikaru said. “I mean weirdly _good_. Maybe we really are dead?”  
  
“I don't think I've earned such a good afterlife,” Pavel said.  
  
“True. So we'd better make the most of this one. Hey – maybe you're a double agent. Like, they researched my background, discovered you, sent you here to charm all my secrets from me.”   
  
“So what if I am?” Pavel asked as Hikaru pinned his hands over his head. “What will you do about it?”  
  
“Well,” Hikaru said. His face turned serious, and he stroked the hollow of Pavel's throat, then left two fingers there, just over his jumping pulse. “I guess I'll tell you all my secrets.”   
  
“And keep me here forever, so that I'll never be able to use them against you,” Pavel said. He knew Hikaru could feel it, how his heart beat faster when he asked him to promise this.  
  
“That's what I told myself, you know, that day,” Hikaru said. He brought his fingers up to Pavel's lips, and Pavel kissed them. “When I was leaving, when you were telling me to forget you. I thought, okay, fine, but I'm only doing this once. I said to myself, 'if I ever find him again, I'll never let him go.'”   
  
“And look,” Pavel said. “You found me.”   
  
“I think I knew I would.” Hikaru put his head against Pavel's chest. “I don't think I would have walked out of that room if I didn't know I'd see you again.”   
  
“But how could you?” Pavel asked. He ruffled Hikaru's hair, smoothed it, ruffled it again. The rain was pounding the roof now, making the leaves in the trees sound musical. “How could you have known that? You only feel that way now. The last five years – it's easy to forget how badly things hurt, and how impossible everything felt, when you're not hurting anymore.”   
  
“Didn't you know, too?” Hikaru asked. He lifted his head, and Pavel saw it in his eyes, something he hadn't noticed before: the thing Polina had possessed, that need for Pavel to understand why she had believed the world was mostly good, as if her own faith in this truth wouldn't matter as much until Pavel took comfort in it, too.   
  
“Well,” Pavel said. “I did join Starfleet and design my entire life around the idea that I might cross paths with you again. So you could say – I didn't know, because I don't think anybody knows such things, but I knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted you back.”   
  
“I guess I just knew you'd get what you wanted, then,” Hikaru said, sitting up. He grinned down at Pavel and ran a hand through his curls.   
  
“Tell me the next time you know that,” Pavel said. “It would save me a lot of angst.”  
  
Hikaru promised that he would. He showed Pavel how the shower worked, washed him under hot water and fucked him against the shower wall, moaning in his ear as he did, telling him over and over that he'd missed him, that he couldn't believe he was here. Pavel kept waiting to feel the same way, staggered by disbelief, but he found that he could believe it, and that he had, in some place that he kept secret even to himself, always believed that he would find his way back to Hikaru. He thought of his sister, and of what his father had said. _She's with you, I know it_. Maybe he was right, and maybe Polina was the one who had believed, because this was the sort of ending she would have wanted for her brother: warm in the arms of a man who was as kind as he was impressive, who could install a solar-powered water heater in a tree house and bake bread that tasted like Belgian beer, the only man who would fit around Pavel like a blueprint of the shelter he'd sought, down to a mint leaf, everything exactly in place.


End file.
